Com­merce chief seeks cen­sus cash

Blames Puerto Rico for woes, says feds won’t help ‘for­ever’

Ad­di­tional funds are needed to im­ple­ment and test new tech­nol­ogy in time for 2020, Con­gress is told.

WASH­ING­TON — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump lashed out at hur­ri­cane-dev­as­tated Puerto Rico on Thurs­day, in­sist­ing in tweets that the fed­eral govern­ment can’t keep send­ing help “for­ever” and sug­gest­ing the U.S. ter­ri­tory was to blame for its fi­nan­cial strug­gles.

His broad­sides trig­gered an out­cry from Democrats in Wash­ing­ton and of­fi­cials on the is­land, which has been reel­ing since Hur­ri­cane Maria struck last month, killing dozens and prompt­ing a ma­jor hu­man­i­tar­ian cri­sis.

San Juan Mayor Car­men Yulin Cruz, with whom Trump has had a run­ning war of words, tweeted that the pres­i­dent’s com­ments were “un­be­com­ing” to a com­man­der in chief and “seem more to come from a ‘Hater in Chief.’ ”

“Mr. Pres­i­dent, you seem to want to dis­re­gard the moral im­per­a­tive that your ad­min­is­tra­tion has been un­able to ful­fill,” the mayor said in a state­ment.

The de­bate played out as the House passed, on a 353-69 vote, a $36.5 bil­lion dis­as­ter aid pack­age that in­cludes as­sis­tance for Puerto Rico’s fi­nan­cially strapped govern­ment.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the govern­ment needs to en­sure that Puerto Rico can “be­gin to stand on its own two feet” and said the U.S. has “got to do more to help Puerto Rico re­build its own econ­omy.” He planned to visit there on Fri­day.

About 85 per­cent of Puerto Rico res­i­dents still lack elec­tric­ity.

Sen­ate Mi­nor­ity Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Twit­ter that “Amer­i­cans are still dy­ing” in Puerto Rico, and “FEMA needs to stay un­til the job is done.”

Oth­ers em­ployed even blunter lan­guage.

“Step up & do your job,” Sen. El­iz­a­beth War­ren, DMass., tweeted at Trump. “Stop ly­ing about how well things are go­ing in Puerto Rico. Stop try­ing to avoid re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

Trump and Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence vis­ited the is­land last week. But Trump’s tweets Thurs­day raised ques­tions about whether the U.S. would re­main there for the long haul. He tweeted, “We can­not keep FEMA, the Mil­i­tary & the First Re­spon­ders, who have been amaz­ing (un­der the most dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances) in P.R. for­ever!”

the pres­i­dent added, “elec­tric and all in­fra­struc­ture was dis­as­ter be­fore hur­ri­canes.” He blamed Puerto Rico for its loom­ing fi­nan­cial cri­sis and “a to­tal lack of ac­count­abil­ity.” The tweets con­flicted with Trump’s past state­ments on Puerto Rico.

Dur­ing an event last week hon­or­ing the her­itage of His­pan­ics, for ex­am­ple, the pres­i­dent said, “We will be there all the time to help Puerto Rico re­cover, re­store, re­build.”

White House chief of staff John Kelly said the U.S. will “stand with those Amer­i­can ci­ti­zens in Puerto Rico un­til the job is done.”

Democrats said Trump’s tweets were de­plorable, given that the 3 mil­lion-plus U.S. ci­ti­zens on Puerto Rico are con­fronting the kind of hard­ships that would draw howls of out­rage if they af­fected a state. One-third of the is­land lacks clean run­ning water and just 8 per­cent of its roads are pass­able, ac­cord­ing to govern­ment sta­tis­tics.

Af­ter years of eco­nomic chal­lenges, Puerto Rico was al­ready in the process of re­struc­tur­ing much of its $74 bil­lion in debt be­fore the hur­ri­cane struck. The fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion is more com­pli­cated than Trump’s tweets sug­gest.

The leg­isla­tive aid pack­age to­tals $36.5 bil­lion and sticks close to a White House re­quest. For now, it ig­nores huge de­mands from the pow­er­ful Flor­ida and Texas del­e­ga­tions, which to­gether pressed for some $40 bil­lion more.

A steady se­ries of dis­as­ters could put 2017 on track to ri­val Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­rina and other 2005 storms as the most costly set of dis­as­ters ever. Ka­t­rina re­quired about $110 bil­lion in emer­gency ap­pro­pri­a­tions.

The bill com­bines $18.7 bil­lion for the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency with $16 bil­lion to per­mit the fi­nan­cially trou­bled fed­eral flood in­sur­ance pro­gram pay an in­flux of Har­vey-re­lated claims. An ad­di­tional $577 mil­lion would pay for western fire­fight­ing ef­forts.

“It’s not easy when you’re used to liv­ing in an Amer­i­can way of life, and then some­body tells you that you’re go­ing to be with­out power for six or eight months,” said Jen­nif­fer Gon­za­lez-Colon, who rep­re­sents Puerto Rico as a non­vot­ing mem­ber of Con­gress. “It’s not easy when you con­tinue to suf­fer — see the suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple with­out food, with­out water, and ac­tu­ally liv­ing in a hu­man­i­tar­ian cri­sis.”

Los An­ge­les Times con­trib­uted.

MARIO TAMA/GETTY

A wo­man and her son col­lect spring water in Puerto Rico. Af­ter Hur­ri­cane Maria, one-third of the is­land lacks clean run­ning water and about 85 per­cent of res­i­dents lack elec­tric­ity.